Much has been written about this covert update to these iPhones, but the most important lesson here is the illustration that, once again, Apple completely and utterly fails at communication. If that PR crisis is not taken by the higher echelons as a wake-up call for Apple to take communication seriously from now on, what will?

Let us back up a bit, at the time Apple engineering was devising this solution for the (real) issue of some devices spontaneously resetting because the battery could not sustain the instantaneous power draw. We know it is the case that this was a project of some sort, in particular because the solution was rolled out for some models first, then other models, etc. Such a thing was obviously documented internally, because it is an important change of behavior that their own QA teams will notice when qualifying the software for release, also because it resolves a support issue, so obviously customer support was in the loop so as to provide feedback on which compromises are acceptable, etc. And yet, at the end of the day, when the fix is about to widely land in people’s phones, the system inside Apple is so completely stuck up on secrecy that not even an extremely expurgated version of this documentation makes it out the door? What is wrong with you people?

As a developer-adjacent person, I can see many developers being affected by this when they can’t understand why the performance of their product has regressed, but this pales in front of the perception by the general public of the whole affair… Indeed, many perceive (with or without justification, doesn’t matter) their computing products as slowing down over time, and given a lack of an easy-to-pin-down cause (I think it’s partly perception, and partly the compounded effect of multiple reasonable engineering tradeoffs), they are more than ready to embrace conspiracy theories about this. And now you’ve given them an argument that will feed conspiracy theories about this for decades! Even for issues completely unrelated to this performance capping (e.g. more pervasive performance pathologies). Stellar job here, Apple! Engineering-wise, I can’t fault the technical solution, however faced with someone affected by the issue, I can’t see how I or anyone, even an army of Apple geniuses, could credibly defend Apple. For all of us who trust on Apple to make reasonable compromises on our behalf (because we want to buy a computer/tablet/phone, not a computer/tablet/phone-tinkering hobby), and who told their interlocutors to place the same trust, you have damaged our credibility — and yes, it is something that should worry you Apple, because our credibility is part of your brand, ultimately.

And I can’t close without saluting the work by the Geekbench crew to narrow down and confirm this effect. I’ve been critical of their product in the past, and I still am, but I have to recognize that it has allowed to bring this action from Apple to light, and I am thankful to them for this.